


Year Zero

by Devilc



Category: Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Crossover, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek Reese finds himself flung about 500 years into the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Year Zero

**Author's Note:**

  * For [e_dog](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=e_dog).



> Written for e_dog in the sccxovers 2009 Metal Mix Challenge. _ Song - God Says Nothing Back by The Wallflowers or The Beginning of the End by NIN_ Title is a reference to the NIN album.

"It's _green_," is all Derek can think, the shock of it skittering through his body, reverberating through his mind. For a heartbeat he thinks it might be because his eyes haven't yet adjusted from the flash of the jump.

But no. They have. The sunshine shows him it's _green_. Not a healthy, vibrant green, more like a sickly, sallow one.

There's not supposed to be sunshine or any shade of green. Not here. Not now. Derek's supposed to be inside, not out, and his guts clench and curdle in response.

With a shaking hand he reaches out and touches the little plants hugging the ashy gray soil, his mind spins, trying to recall the name for them.

_Goatheads_.

He snorts at the realization. It figures that goatheads would survive. He's half happy that they're still pale and specked with little yellow flowers instead of thornballs for him to step on.

But its not all goatheads. There's a cluster of dandelions about a yard away, and even a few little knots of purslane. At least those two were weeds that you could eat. Hell, _After_, purslane, which would grow in any cranny it could get a root into, was about the only edible thing the Resistance could grow. Dandelions, too.

Okay, so he'll have something to nibble on, because from the looks of it, he's the last man on Earth; there is _nothing_ except him and these little plants hugging the dirt as far as the eye can see, and -- he sucks in a deep breath -- there's supposed to be _something_ here. He should not have an unobstructed view of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Gingerly, Derek rises from his crouch and spins as he hears the sound of gravel crunching behind him.

It figures that ~~she~~ the Metal would still be here.

He's naked,~~something's~~ everything's wrong, and John's pet Metal is still here.

(Damnit.)

Only ... she's dressed in a ruffled cotton skirt with flowers printed on it, and boots, and a cream colored sweater that's about three sizes too large. And before he can ask her where she got the clothes, she looks him up and down, cocks her head and says, "Buried under leaves blood red and gold. Death says nothing back but I told you so. I told you so."

_This is not Cameron_. Not unless something extremely odd has gone wrong with her chip. Over the panic that threatens to squeeze his throat shut, Derek manages to whisper, "Where am I?"

She cocks her head the other way, gives him another up and down, and replies, "Earth That Was."

~oo(0)oo~

Sarah fucked him, pure and simple.

(Well, it might have been John, but it hurts too much to consider that possibility for more than a split second.)

The plan had called for sending him about 5 months into the future, except that ~~somebody'd~~ she'd thrown a few extra zeroes behind that 5.

A part of Derek burns with impotent rage.

The other part of his brain says that it doesn't matter. He can't do anything about it. That humanity survived (and even went to the stars). And _that's_ what matters in the end.

~oo(0)oo~

Her name is River and they all think that Derek's a little mad like she is, at first. River's brother, Simon, the doctor, has scanned his brain repeatedly and found no organic damage, so the reason that Derek can't give any of them an explanation that makes sense as to how he ended up on Earth That Was must be some sort of psychological trauma -- because "time displacement equipment"? That's just crazy talk.

Derek thinks he's a bit mad like Captain Mal, who followed River's scattershot explanation for why they had to go looking for Earth That Was, and tracked down hunches and rumors and legends for about three months before getting the coordinates dialed in.

The same Captain Mal told him about a place called Serenity Valley over shots of white lightning (only Mal called it "baijiu") one night when they'd both woken up and were walking off the nightmares. Derek responded by telling him about the _stench_ of the Century City camp.

(But not about the Metal. Or what happened to him in the basement. Never that. To anyone. Ever.)

Mal and Zoe think that Derek was a Browncoat like them, that Century City was a _POW_ camp ("What, like Andersonville during the Civil War?" Derek asked, which only got the strangest blank look from them) and have suggested to Simon that perhaps it's a good thing that Derek's memories are "all muddled up."

Derek's mad like Mal. He's _sure_ of that.

Only, his war dates from before The Age of Legends, the age before humanity first took to the stars. What he's trying to tell them is like King Arthur and Camelot and Mordred and ....

And there's no way to explain _that_.

Or Skynet.

~oo(0)oo~

He gets on okay with this rag-tag band of space grifters. Pulls his weight. Earns his protein mush.

He's muscle. He knows it. He doesn't know what else to do. Derek's just glad they've kept him on even though he doesn't have that much to offer to them. He can't fix an engine. Or pilot a space ship. He doesn't really know what to say beyond basic being polite to Kaylee, Inara, or River. He's no medic, but Simon's happy to teach him the ABCs of modern field medicine. The rest? They all appreciate that he has a good aim and doesn't scare under pressure.

(Whoever thinks a Reaver is scary has never faced a T-888.)

Derek appreciates that the nature of what they do to make ends meet keeps them on the Rim and away from other people mostly, and that's good for him right now.

He keeps his guns clean and ready, spots Jayne when they lift weights, plays a mean game of checkers, works with Simon to keep them stitched up, and occasionally helps Mal polish off a bottle of ~~paint stripper~~ baijiu.

~oo(0)oo~

Lack of Chinese makes Derek more pig-ignorant than Jayne at times. It hurts the most whenever he grabs a few moments to search the cortex.

Skynet is something that serious scholars talk about, and they talk about it the way Derek remembers his teachers talking about the Trojan War. They know it had something to do with "the final conflict" that rendered Earth a tired, used-up planet. There are heated debates amongst them about the origins of the war, all of them so off base, so much legend mixed up with scraps of fact, that Derek both laughs and cries when he reads a few of their ideas.

He finds himself one night in a database. Half as a joke he scanned the barcode etched on his lower arm and the cortex churned and churned before spitting out his name and the dates that Skynet held him in that house.

(He can almost feel the grain of those wooden floorboards beneath his fingertips, hear the ghostly echoes of the music floating up from the basement.)

Scholars debate the significance of this list and lists like it. The database has it listed as a possible employee ID list.

Derek reaches over and grabs ~~the baijiu~~ the moonshine, pours himself a few fingers, and searches for more lists and gets maudlin as he remembers his friends and all they went through, and good times spent with the Four Horsemen, and ponders the awful, bitter irony of somebody thinking his barcode number came from some sort of employee ID badge.

The last drops drip out of the bottle and into the cup -- it was only about a third full to begin with -- when something makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It's River. Unearthly as ever, she says, "I'm calling out from the deep ends of my bones. Time says nothing back but I told you so. I told you so."

"Yeah, something like that," he rasps back before standing and lurching down the hall to his bunk.

~oo(0)oo~

The pounding in his head matches the pounding on the door. Jayne shouts something down to him about does he want to come out and play a little ball?

Well no, not really. "Yeah," he shouts back up the hatch. "Just give me about five minutes."

The hangover's not as bad as he feared. He drops some alka-selzerish stuff in a glass and chugs it. Besides, working up a sweat is one of the best (and most brutal) cures for a hangover that Derek knows. He splashes a little water on his face and studies his reflection in the mirror.

(Bloodshot eyes. He needs to shave, too.)

He brushes his teeth.

(Every thing and every one he ever loved is gone. Long gone. All but forgotten.)

He's stuck in the back forty of space with people who are crazy, or have crazy big secrets, or both.

(He's quite possibly the only person living who knows the name of the San Gabriel Mountains, or the Sierras, or the Rockies.)

He splashes more water on his face and towels it dry. He pulls a clean shirt on.

(The war is over. Humanity won. Judgment Day and the Apocalypse came and went.)

He pulls his trousers on, ties his shoes, blows a big breath out, and climbs the ladder.

("_Time says nothing back but I told you so._")

Today is the first day of the rest of his life.


End file.
